Monthly Archives: November 2013

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November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“I once gave myself a shot in the leg on an outside deck on a cruise ship, nobody else around. I was wearing shorts, so it was very quick. My husband caught someone way across deck looking and grimacing. Quick as a wink, hubby flipped him off. My hero.”

Becky Tise
Type 1 for 8 years
DX date 10-15-2005

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“For me, perseverance is key with diabetes. And determination. These things I learned from watching my mother. She is the most determined woman I know. I think that if she can stay strong through losing two of her children, cancer 3 times, watching one daughter battles Crohn’s and me deal with diabetes, then I can do it.

I am determined to live the best live I can and not let diabetes get in the way. So I work hard. I watch what I eat, I count carbs and balance insulin. Basically, I think like a pancreas. I take one day at a time, for what good does it do to worry about tomorrow. And most of all, I hold on tight to Jesus because this is one wild roller coaster ride! I can do anything, even diabetes, through Christ who gives me strength.”

Cathy DeVreeze
T1 for 8 years
Diagnosed May 2005

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“It’s Diabetes awareness month. In just over 3 years AJ has tested his blood more than 7,000 times. He has spent hours in the nurses office instead of the classroom. He jabs a needle in his stomach every 3 days so he can be infused with insulin and another one that helps us watch his numbers throughout the day. He weighs his food and has decided some foods are just not worth the frustrating numbers they cause. He is 11 years old and must think about food and carbs and insulin throughout the day just to see tomorrow. Yet, he’s a regular kid with regular likes and dislikes. He is my Rock Star.”

Shelley – T1d mom who loves to spend time with her kids, just not at 3AM

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“Type 1 diabetes is a mandatory change in lifestyle, an alternative perspective on every day choices like eating, sleeping, and driving (among other things), an unexpected, undesired, blameless dependence on insulin and blood sugar testing, and, as of today it is still incurable.”

Michelle Kaelin
T1 dx 01/82

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“Having lived with Type 1 Diabetes since the age of five, it has brought me more challenges than I can count, but I am proud to have overcome all of them. I don’t know what kind of person I would be without my diabetes because that’s really a life I haven’t lived. But I do know what kind of person living with diabetes has made me: I am strong, I am hopeful, I am determined and I am resilient. I have diabetes. Diabetes does not have me!”

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!
*Like/follow us on Facebook at Diabetes Light: My holistic journey to health to read more quotes this month from those living with and affected by diabetes. The quotes are also being shared at http://diabeteslight.com!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“I find that my diabetes is like riding a horse. There are days where you feel great, you saddle up, you’re superior and that horse is in submission, being directed by you. And then there are those days where you have everything you need, all your gear, it looks like a perfect riding day, and all of a sudden you’re thrown off, being dragged behind for miles in the dust and also hit by the occasional rock.

This horse goes 24/7, it sure has stamina. You even have to balance on it in your sleep. Everyday, you’re in the saddle. It’s an unpredictable beast, but you like a challenge, you wake with enthusiasm, hoping that you own the reigns again that day. Day after day after day. You never let it own you.”

Carrie Hetherington
25 yrs old, Type 1
dx’d 8/7/2008

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“I have had diabetes for 44 years. Back when I was diagnosed with it in 1969 the only way we could tell what our insulin needs were was by urine tests. I was not a model diabetic so my blood sugars were, I’m sure very high, so I was very lethargic. I was not into sports and I was very shy so I hung out with the kids who would accept me, which were the smokers and druggies, which introduced me to the terrible life of alcoholism and drug addiction. I did not respond well to drugs but I sure enjoyed the feeling I felt from alcohol. Alcohol was my release from the stress I had to deal with with my diabetes, but also caused others issues with my diabetes.

Many years later I was tired of dealing with the alcohol addiction and how it was affecting my health so I entered myself into a treatment facility for a month. After that I signed up for the Tour de Cure and found a lot of people that dealt with the same issues I did I finally found a community that I can find help with in many areas that help me take control of my health issues and am very grateful for that.

I have now learned a lot about myself and my diabetes and have a lot of support from the diabetes community. My quotes that help me deal with my diabetes and alcoholism are “One day at a time” and “Easy does it.” I deal with both issues one day at a time and I also have to remind myself from day to day to take it easy on myself. I am so grateful that “Today” I am still healthy for what I have put myself through and still have not suffered from any diabetes complications.”

Marianne Mealey
Type 1 diabetic
44 years

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help!

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“A successful diabetic is someone who transforms their fears into foresight and vigilance, mistakes and pain into resolve, and desire into undertaking. It’s not an easy path for anyone. Trying to play the part of your pancreas is VERY difficult and I’ll never be able to do it perfectly; it’s simply an unreasonable expectation that many in the medical profession (non-diabetics) demand and guilt their patients into believing is achievable 100% of the time.

Diabetes means enduring thousands of needle and lancet pokes every year, an endless array of medical appointments, disrupted daily schedules and more importantly broken sleep as you wake to treat a life-threatening low or high blood sugar. It’s maddening how many variables there are: stress, sickness, sleep, intensity of exercise (or lack thereof), stars aren’t lined up right…?!?!

Enough of the frustrations. After the initial shock of diagnosis and subsequent life adjustments I came to realize what the truly important things in my life are: family, friends, good health and quality of life. It took over a decade of wrestling with emotions, isolation and erratic blood sugars to seek another path. The Diabetic Masters I learned from, Dr. Richard Bernstein, Ellen Sherman, Cynthia Zuber, DeAnn Mullins, Joslin medalists and many more all inspired me to focus my energy towards positive health progress and embody the mind, body, spirit required to manage and live the D-life.

After being on a Medtronic pump and CGMS for approximately 8 years, I recently came off and went back to Multiple Daily Injections (MDI). The most significant improvement though was radically changing my diet from the ADA recommended one to a very low carb “paleo-like” diet that uses the slow metabolism of proteins through gluconeogenesis to give my cells the bulk of their required glucose.

I can report feeling better than I have in a decade, have lost over 20 lbs and enjoy very stabilized blood glucose levels with no post-meal spikes! I’m never hungry or snacky after meals and feel very satisfied. My sugars are better controlled now than they ever were in the past and I’m really making some serious progress managing this ubiquitous disease. After almost of a decade of trying to be “normal” like everybody else, I’ve realized that is neither sustainable nor safe.

I feel so much better after meeting others in the Diabetes Online Community (DOC) that encourage & inspire me daily letting me know that I’m not alone. The momentum this new regime has given me, the radical improvement in health and the influential people I’ve met have inspired me to start my own page to share the highs & lows we all endure as Type 1, 2 or 3 diabetics. Welcome to Diabetes awareness month and as Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“It is during the darkest hours with diabetes that the greatest human strength is discovered. For it is here, when walking the darkest paths and deepest valleys, that the friendship, support, kindness and kinship that the diabetes community offers, shines through to raise me up once again. For this community and the blessings it brings, I am eternally grateful.”

Anna Presswell
I am 31 years old and have lived with T1 for 26 years, I ‘turn 27’ in diabetes years on Christmas Eve this year.

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!

November is Diabetes Awareness Month! I am pleased to present you with D-Quote, a Diabetes Light initiative that gives voice to our community and helps provide awareness for this challenging invisible condition. Thank you for reading. I encourage you to pass these meaningful quotes and stories along to increase our advocacy and outreach efforts. All advocacy moves us closer to a cure. Thanks for your help! 🙂

**A special thanks to our community members for taking the time to write and bravely share their stories and experiences to provide diabetes awareness.

“Diabetes is something I do, something I care for, not who I am. I am a woman who loves, plays, hurts and struggles. Has successes and failures, good days and bad days. I am strong and healthy, sensitive and emotional yet capable and willing. I will not be defined nor limited by a diagnosis. I am so much more both because and in-spite of diabetes.”

You have just read a D-quote, a Diabetes Light initiative to create awareness and support for November’s Diabetes Awareness month. Please like, comment and share to promote advocacy and awareness for diabetes. Thank you!